The Bicycle Info Project :: The Info Blog

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, the Bicycle Info Site contains a wealth of knowledge about steel tubing.  One of the reasons for this is that I once thought of becoming a framebuilder.  I built about a dozen frames and some stems from around 1985 til about 1995.  The name I used was Equus Cycle Frames.  Equus is Latin for horse and I felt that horses, like bikes, came in several different versions.  Thus the Thoroughbred was the race frame, the Appaloosa was the all round frame, The Percheron was the touring frame, and the Mule was the off road frame.  I made racing, touring, and off road, both lugged and lugless in Columbus, Reynolds, True Temper; and even a frame made from Carpenter’s Aermet (the grandpa of all the new air hardened steels).  I never had the tenacity or capital to make it a full time gig.  In the beginning, I offered people a frame for $300.  (This is after I had built a couple for myself.)  I had one taker.  Over the years I built a couple of more for myself and got a few commissions (also for dirt cheap), but never had people screaming for a custom frame.   I never quite figured it out.  I thought that a lot of folks would be willing to try someone new out for such a low price.  I would.  But it never happened.  I know that one reason is location.   Philly has a lot of cyclists, and all of them ride cheap bikes.  Not necessarily garbage, but old is good, used is good,  and a closeout is something very special to cherish forever.  After seeing cyclists and talking to shop rats in other parts of the country, I realize that this area is always going to be low to middle end.  Heck, even the homeless people in Boulder ride a Trek. 
Still, I’m glad I did it.  Now that I’m older and have more room and time, I think about trying again, but my wife is not keen on the idea.  She works for an insurance company.  I still ride the second frame I ever made (a touring frame named Leah that clocks in at over seven pounds without the fork and has 19 inch chainstays) and my first “go fast” frame.  While I have not built any frames recently, I kept all my tooling.  Hopefully my daughter wants one.  I’ll give her a great deal.

I get a lot of email about my site, most of it looking for some more specific information.  Every once in while, though, a request comes along that I have no idea how to answer.  I received one the other day from a Mr. Pratt in New Zealand asking about the Fiorelli brand name.  He was wondering if the name might be available for him to use on his own brand of bikes.  I’m clueless and curious.  If the bike has not been in production for a certain amount of time, can one claim the name and use it?  Does the name have to be copyrighted (or the equivalent in other countries) and if it is not, can someone else use it?  In any event, he wrote me a nice email and seems a decent enough fellow that I told him I’d post it up here and see if any of my readers might have a clue.  Particularly those in Italy who might be able to direct Mr. Pratt to the correct agency to find out.  If you find something and don’t want to make it public, just send me an email and I will forward it to him.  Grazia.

. . . but I had to do it.  I turned on ‘hot link’ protection on my site.  This means that if you want to display any of the literature from the Bicycle Info Project site without linking, the image won’t display.  I’ve been thinking of doing this for a while but the bandwidth was within reason and almost always, the poster told of where he got the images from.  But yesterday I found a London fixed gear site displaying almost all my Reynolds ephemera without nary a ‘thanks, mate’ or link back to my site.  Over a thousand views were recorded and that is a lot of bandwidth (which is what I pay for).  I have found most folks are kind about links and usage of material.  I’m not too uptight about it; after all, I didn’t produce it, I just post it, but a lot of what I have is one of a kind and I’d like folks to know from whence it came.